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Canada Reads 2024


Canada Reads is back and we have lots of copies of all five contenders so you can read along and prepare yourself for the debates!

This year, the great Canadian book debate is looking for one book to carry us forward. When we are at a crossroads, when uncertainty is upon us, when we have faced challenges and are ready for the future, how do we know where to go next? This collection of books is about finding the resilience and the hope needed to carry on and keep moving forward.

The 2024 contenders are:

- Athlete and CBC Sports contributor Dallas Soonias champions Bad Cree by Jessica Johns
- Former Calgary mayor Naheed Nenshi champions Denison Avenue by Christina Wong & Daniel Innes
- Fashion influencer Mirian Njoh champions Meet Me at the Lake by Carley Fortune
- Actor Kudakwashe Rutendo champions Shut Up You're Pretty by Téa Mutonji
- Author Heather O'Neill champions The Future by Catherine Leroux, translated by Susan Ouriou

The debates will take place March 4-7, 2024.

Bad Cree

- Jessica Johns

Trade paperback $24.99
Reader Reward Price: $22.49

2024 CBC CANADA READS SELECTION

AMAZON CANADA FIRST NOVEL AWARD SHORTLIST

A CBC BOOKS BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR

AN AMERICAN LIBRARY ASSOCIATION ALEX AWARD WINNER

AURORA AWARD FOR BEST NOVEL SHORTLIST

RAKUTEN KOBO EMERGING WRITER PRIZE FOR LITERARY FICTION SHORTLIST

NATIONAL BESTSELLER

A haunting debut novel where dreams, family and spirits collide 

Mackenzie, a Cree millennial, wakes up in her one-bedroom Vancouver apartment clutching a pine bough she had been holding in her dream just moments earlier. When she blinks, it disappears. But she can still smell the sharp pine scent in the air, the nearest pine tree a thousand kilometres away in the far reaches of Treaty 8. 

Mackenzie continues to accidentally bring back items from her dreams, dreams that are eerily similar to real memories of her older sister and Kokum before their untimely deaths. As Mackenzie's life spirals into a living nightmare--crows are following her around and she's getting texts from her dead sister on the other side--it becomes clear that these dreams have terrifying, real-life consequences. Desperate for help, Mackenzie returns to her mother, sister, cousin, and aunties in her small Alberta hometown. Together, they try to uncover what is haunting Mackenzie before something irrevocable happens to anyone else around her. 

Haunting, fierce, an ode to female relations and the strength found in kinship, Bad Cree is a gripping, arresting debut by an unforgettable voice. 

Denison Avenue

- Daniel Innes , Christina Wong

Trade paperback $32.95
Reader Reward Price: $29.66

Shortlisted for 2024 Canada Reads

Finalist for the 2024 Carnegie Medals for Excellence through the American Library Association

A moving story told in visual art and fiction about gentrification, aging in place, grief, and vulnerable Chinese Canadian elders

Bringing together ink artwork and fiction, Denison Avenue by Daniel Innes (illustrations) and Christina Wong (text) follows the elderly Wong Cho Sum, who, living in Toronto's gentrifying Chinatown-Kensington Market, begins to collect bottles and cans after the sudden loss of her husband as a way to fill her days and keep grief and loneliness at bay. In her long walks around the city, Cho Sum meets new friends, confronts classism and racism, and learns how to build a life as a widow in a neighborhood that is being destroyed and rebuilt, leaving elders like her behind.

A poignant meditation on loss, aging, gentrification, and the barriers that Chinese Canadian seniors experience in big cities, Denison Avenue beautifully combines visual art, fiction, and the endangered Toisan dialect to create a book that is truly unforgettable.

The Future

- Catherine Leroux , Susan Ouriou

Trade paperback $24.95
Reader Reward Price: $22.46

Winner of Canada Reads 2024 o Longlisted for the 2024 Carol Shields Prize for Fiction o One of Tor.com's Can't Miss Speculative Fiction for Fall 2023 o Listed in CBC Books Fiction to Read in Fall 2023 o One of 20 Books You Heard about on CBC Last Week o One of Kirkus Reviews' Fall 2023 Big Books By Small Presses o A Kirkus Review Work of Translated Fiction To Read Now o One of CBC Books Best Books of 2023 o A CBC Books Bestselling Canadian Book of the Week

In an alternate history in which the French never surrendered Detroit, children protect their own kingdom in the trees.

In an alternate history of Detroit, the Motor City was never surrendered to the US. Its residents deal with pollution, poverty, and the legacy of racism--and strange and magical things are happening: children rule over their own kingdom in the trees and burned houses regenerate themselves. When Gloria arrives looking for answers and her missing granddaughters, at first she finds only a hungry mouse in the derelict home where her daughter was murdered. But the neighbours take pity on her and she turns to their resilience and impressive gardens for sustenance.

When a strange intuition sends Gloria into the woods of Parc Rouge, where the city's orphaned and abandoned children are rumored to have created their own society, she can't imagine the strength she will find. A richly imagined story of community and a plea for persistence in the face of our uncertain future, The Future is a lyrical testament to the power we hold to protect the people and places we love--together.

Meet Me at the Lake

- Carley Fortune

Trade paperback $24.95
Reader Reward Price: $22.46

INSTANT #1 NATIONAL BESTSELLER 
INSTANT #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
*SHORTLISTED FOR CANADA READS 2024*

In this breathtaking new novel from the #1 bestselling author of Every Summer After, a random connection sends two strangers on a daylong adventure where they make a promise one keeps and the other breaks, with life-changing effects.


Fern Brookbanks has wasted far too much of her adult life thinking about Will Baxter. She spent just twenty-four hours in her early twenties with the aggravatingly attractive, idealistic artist, a chance encounter that spiraled into a daylong adventure in Toronto. The timing was wrong, but their connection was undeniable: they shared every secret, every dream, and made a pact to meet one year later. Fern showed up. Will didn't.

At thirty-two, Fern's life doesn't look at all how she once imagined it would. Instead of living in the city, Fern's back home, running her mother's Muskoka lakeside resort--something she vowed never to do. The place is in disarray, her ex-boyfriend's the manager, and Fern doesn't know where to begin.

She needs a plan--a lifeline. To her surprise, it comes in the form of Will, who arrives nine years too late, with a suitcase in tow and an offer to help on his lips. Will may be the only person who understands what Fern's going through. But how could she possibly trust this expensive-suit wearing mirage who seems nothing like the young man she met all those years ago. Will is hiding something, and Fern's not sure she wants to know what it is. 

But ten years ago, Will Baxter rescued Fern. Can she do the same for him?

Shut Up You're Pretty

- Tea Mutonji

Trade paperback $17.95
Reader Reward Price: $16.16

CANADA READS FINALIST, 2024

Winner, Trillium Book Award and Edmund White Award for Debut Fiction; Finalist, Rogers Writers' Trust of Canada Fiction Prize; a Globe and Mail Best Book of the Year

In Tea Mutonji's disarming debut story collection, a woman contemplates her Congolese traditions during a family wedding, a teenage girl looks for happiness inside a pack of cigarettes, a mother reconnects with her daughter through their shared interest in fish, and a young woman decides to shave her head in the waiting room of an abortion clinic. These punchy, sharply observed stories blur the lines between longing and choosing, exploring the narrator's experience as an involuntary one. Tinged with pathos and humour, they interrogate the moments in which femininity, womanness, and identity are not only questioned but also imposed.

Shut Up You're Pretty is the first book to be published under the imprint VS. Books, a series of books curated and edited by writer-musician Vivek Shraya featuring work by new and emerging Indigenous or Black writers, or writers of colour.

This is a selection of our current Canada Reads 2024 titles. To find other titles or authors, or just to browse, please use the search box.